Michael Pena Confirmed for ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’

It’s a testament to the Marvel Cinematic Universe that Ant-Manwas a critical and commercial success despite its highly publicized production issues. While many of the other films in the series deal with world domination or destruction, Ant-Man lowered the stakes a little bit and gave us an old-fashioned heist film about a group of lovable losers and an evil corporation. And none of these losers were quite so lovable as Michael Pena’s Luis, who stole an entire film from both Michael Douglas and Paul Rudd.

So the news that Pena will be back for the next Ant-Man movie is great for the franchise. In a press release announcing Pena’s attachment to an upcoming horror film, The Hollywood Reporter(via Heroic Hollywood) made mention of Pena’s upcoming project, including — drum roll, please — Ant-Man and the Wasp. This isn’t exactly a shock to everyone involved; after all, Marvel is smart enough to sign its talent to multi-picture deals, and Pena was instrumental to the success of the first movie (and, let’s face it, one of the few Hispanic characters Marvel has in their cinematic universe). Still, it’s nice to have confirmation that a fan favorite will be back.

As a reminder, while we don’t know much about the plans for Ant-Man and the Wasp, we do know that director Peyton Reed has plans to make the sequel a little “weirder” than the original film (while still staying true to what made it a success). If this means more scenes like the ones where Luis rambles on about his circle of friends and the tip they gave him about a potential robbery, sign me up.